According to the Biblical narrative, Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple, was a temple in Jerusalem (בֵּית־הַמִּקְדָּשׁ: Beit Ha-Miqdash) built under King Solomon's reign and completed in 957 BCE. The Temple was looted and then destroyed in 586/587 BCE at the hands of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II,[1] who also deported the Jews to Babylon. The destruction of the temple and the deportation were seen as fulfillments of prophecy and strengthened Judaic religious beliefs.[2]
The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) describes how Solomon's father, David, the great warrior king, united the Israelite tribes, captured Jerusalem and brought the Israelite's central artifact, the Ark of the Covenant, into the city.[3] David chose Mount Moriah in Jerusalem as the site for a future temple to house the Ark, today known as the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif.[2] However, God would not let him build the Temple, for he had "shed much blood."[4] Instead, his son Solomon, known for being an ambitious builder of public works, built it.[5] He placed the Ark in the Holy of Holies, the windowless innermost room and most sacred area of the Temple.[6] In the Holy of Holies, God's presence rested. Only the high priest was allowed to enter the room, once per year on the Day of Atonement, carrying the blood of a sacrificial lamb and burning incense.[6]
According to the Bible, the Temple not only served as a religious building, but also as a place of assembly for the Israelites.[2] The Jews who had been deported in the aftermath of the Babylonian conquest were eventually allowed to return and rebuild their temple — known as the Second Temple. But the building no longer housed the Ark, as it had disappeared.[7]
There is a general agreement that a ritual structure existed on the Temple Mount by the point of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, however serious doubts remain in attributing it or its construction to Solomon, or any king roughly contemporaneous to his lifetime.[8] Scholars doubt the veracity of the Biblical account as no evidence for the existence of Solomon's Temple has been found and the Temple is not mentioned in extra-Biblical accounts.[9][10] Artifacts supposedly proving the existence of Solomon's Temple - an ivory pomegranate and a ninth century BCE stone tablet - have turned out to be fakes.[11] Many scholars believe that the inscription on a pottery shard known as Ostracon 18 written around 600 BCE references the Temple in Jerusalem.[12] If so, it would be the only extra-Biblical corroboration of the Temple found.
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